Sunday, October 3, 2010

Baby Boomers Less Healthy Than Parents?

The headlines from MSNBC read: “ Baby Boomers May Be Less Healthy Than Parents (4.20.07).” How can this be? Boomers smoke less than their parents, seem to exercise more, yet have poorer health parameters. The article went on to report that boomers report more difficulty climbing the stairs, getting up from a chair and doing other routine activities. Furthermore, they report more problems with chronic medical conditions including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes.

There is no question that the obesity epidemic is partly to blame-over two-thirds of adults are overweight and over one-third are obese. However, I think there is more to the story. We take more medications than ever before, yet our health is not improving. Perhaps we are taking too many medications.

For many years, the declining health of successive generations has been discussed at many holistic medical conferences that I have attended. Many holistic doctors have predicted that the decline in health of subsequent generations would occur. How could many of us make this prediction? We (holistic practitioners) knew that too many toxic drugs were being prescribed for conditions that did not warrant them. Furthermore, these toxic agents were being prescribed for conditions where appropriate lifestyle changes were a much better approach.

Holistic practitioners (including myself) have predicted that as the toxic load increased in our environment our health would suffer. We are exposed to an ever increasing load of toxic chemicals including bromine, fluoride, and mercury that are bound to affect our health and our children’s health and the health of future children. The consequences of this increased toxic load are the increasing array of chronic illnesses from cancer, diabetes and hypertension in adults as well as ADHD, autism and cancer in children.

We’re relying too much on prescription drugs to treat these ailments. However, many of these drugs do nothing to treat an underlying cause of an illness and actually cause other problems. I have written all my books to give you an alternative view and to provide you with safe and effective natural therapies that treat the underlying cause(s) of illness.
The news is not all negative. We can reverse this trend. Our health does not have to decline as we age. How do we prevent that? The answer is simple; go back to the basics; eat a healthy diet, optimize nutrition, and exercise. Finally it is important to periodically undergo detoxification.

The human body is designed to function at a high rate if it is given the appropriate raw materials. Drugs do have their place; however, there are many natural ways to optimize your health without relying on expensive drug therapies that do not treat any underlying cause of an illness. More information on the problems with drug therapies and which natural therapies work can be found in my book, Drugs That Don’t Work and Natural Therapies That Do, 2nd Edition.